Long Beach State Football: Undefeated since 1991

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The campus of Long Beach State is a sprawling, teeming thing. Built on the city’s second largest hill, with over 35,000 students and faculty, it’s always busy, and always moving. If you walk around the quad or the food court on a Tuesday afternoon, you’ll see one shirt over and over again. It’s oxford grey, and reads Long Beach State at the top. In the center is a football emblazoned with the familiar “LB” logo. And on the bottom row, it says, “Undefeated since 1991.”

The joke, of course, is that the school hasn’t had a team since 1991—a fact that hasn’t kept the $16.95 tee-shirt mocking that fact from flying off the shelves of the campus bookstore. Like most things surrounding the school’s pigskin history, the shirt is a paradox. Since the football team was shut down over twenty years ago, the school has won three national championships, one in men’s volleyball and two in women’s volleyball. The Dirtbags baseball team has gone to the College World Series twice. The men’s basketball team made the NCAA Tournament five times, and the women’s soccer team four times, including an Elite Eight run in 2011.

Still, ask a bookstore employee what their top-selling piece of gear is in the last five years, and they don’t even hesitate: “The football shirt.”

If the 49ers must live only in memory and history, though, at least there are plenty of good stories to be had there. The program came alive in the late 60s when Jim Stangeland—who’d won three national titles with LBCC—came to campus.

“Long Beach was like a sleeping giant to me,” he would tell the LA Times decades after he left. Stangeland was just the man to wake it up. In 1969, his 49ers went 8-3, as a talented roster developed under his grueling practices. Poly alum Dee Andrews was back as an assistant coach, while serving as the Athletic Director at Franklin Junior High, and the team had a distinctly Long Beach flavor—one of the motives behind hiring Stangeland was his ability to bring in top Long Beach talent.

1970 set up like a movie script for the 49ers—so much so, in fact, that 49er Hall of Famer Jeff Severson actually wrote a screenplay treatment based on that year. The team had returning talent by the bucketload, with Severson, stud running back Leon Burns, and others.

The 49ers’ best ever game was played that year against a cocky San Diego State team, who had reason to be. Coryell’s Aztecs team hadn’t lost a game in 32 tries, and were ranked in the top ten, nationally, ahead of UCLA and USC. They were the kings of Southern California, and taking the field against a team that, while improved lately, had more often played the role of court jester than title contender.

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The storylines were rich: over 39,000 fans crammed into the stadium—the previous record for home attendance for a 49er game was 18,000. The San Diego State side was already chanting, “Bring on Ohio State,” as they expected to see the Buckeyes in a bowl game at the end of the year. Instead. Long Beach State beat the pants off them—the final score was 27-11, and it wasn’t even that close.

“It was decisive,” says Severson, still smiling 42 years later. “We clobbered them.” Stangeland’s brilliant move was to run a lot of fakes to Burns, who he knew the Aztecs would load up on. The 49ers’ best player (perhaps of all time) served as a perfect decoy. After the game, the Long Beach State fans poured out of the stands, flooding the field. Burns took off his shoulder pads, and, surrounded by fans, he ripped his jersey open, revealing a Superman jersey underneath.

In that sweet moment, it would have been impossible to look into the future, to see a program decimated, then briefly revived with the megastar shock hiring of NFL legend George Allen, only to fade away for good after Allen’s passing.

The possibility of a team returning has been a much-gnawed over possibility, but it’s unlikely to happen. Severson, long embittered by that fact, has developed a sense of humor about it. “If (LBSU alum) Steven Spielberg endows it without about $25 million, or if I hit an oil field next week, maybe,” he says. Until that time, 49er fans of old will have their memories, and current students will have their “Undefeated Since 1991” shirts, supporting the school’s most popular team—which just so happens to not exist anymore.

Portions of this article are adapted from Mike’s book, Football in Long Beach, which contains a comprehensive overview of the 49ers’ gridiron history.